


Hex

by FishFlesh



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Blood Drinking, Body Horror, Captivity, Conditioning, Drugs, M/M, Potions, Prowl probably need anger management, Snakes, Sorta kinda, Supernatural Elements, Tag As I Go, Transformation, Witch Hunter!Prowl, Witch!Jazz, Witchcraft, because I honestly have no idea what I'm doing, black magic, but not really bad body horror?, butchery of a dead robot animal, cricket shenanigans, if you wanna...think of it that way i guess, implied vore, it's like a choose your own adventure!, sometimes I'll let you guys help, they're the same thing, why'd is have to be snakes?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-01-27 17:49:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 16,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21396196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FishFlesh/pseuds/FishFlesh
Summary: Witch hunter steps in magical bear trap.Witch gets a new pet.
Relationships: Jazz/Prowl
Comments: 499
Kudos: 250





	1. Watch Where You Step

**Author's Note:**

> Prequel to a thing.

This… was not good.

Prowl gave the glittering filaments scattered at his feet a baleful glare. He should have been more careful—as a hunter he’d been taught better—and had gone and stepped into a trap. He could feel magic binding him, unseen but strong, and though he could turn and flee he knew it would tear into him, injure him on some deeper level that would leave him crippled or dead.

Either option would be accompanied by a heaping dose of agony.

So he waited, masking his quiet dread with annoyance, as he went over the various ways this could play out.

Almost all scenarios ended with him dead or, worse, altered and bound to the will of some depraved black magic user. If he were lucky he might get away with an unpleasant curse he’d have to get help dispelling.

Or maybe he’d be turned into a mechanimal.

Standing still as he was, Prowl felt the shift in the magic trap around him, the shimmering sensation strongest in his door wings as the woven magics rippled along like some great web cast around him—then he felt the difference in atmospheric pressure as someone approached him from behind.

“Ooo~ Caught a lil’ somethin’, did I?” A resonant voice, pleasant to listen to and warm with amusement shattered the silence he’d been standing in for far too long. Slowly Prowl turned to look over his shoulder as a figure edged around him.

Smaller than him, but not by much, but healthy looking plating under arcane painted glyphs. There was a warm, bright smile under a glowing blue visor and a black helm with stubby horns wrapped in braided wire from which beads and small charms hung—his captor liked to look good on top of being a heathen? It would be just his luck to stumble into the trap of an eccentric magician.

Prowl recognized some of the charms and glyphs however and gave the charming face a withering glare.

A witch.

“Ah now, fierce as ya look we don’t wanna have that stuck on ya handsome face forever, now do we? Let’s see about changin’ that.”

Now to see which of his unpleasant scenarios were in his immediate future.


	2. Wanna Be A Worm?

“Gonna tell me ya name?” The witch stood before Prowl with a cheery smile, relaxed as if the hunter currently trapped just within the entrance way couldn’t attack him physically. It was tempting, really, but Prowl was less than keen to find out what would happen to his innards should he step out of the confines of the trap.

“No? Well ain’t that rude—ya waltz into my home and won’t introduce yaself?” The little heathen stepped closer, bright smile and shining visor as he leaned in close. Prowl could probably hit him if he dared. “I’m Jazz~”

White fingers twitched—just one punch to that smug little face was so very tempting.

After a moment the witch pulled back again, the hunter’s chance at retaliation gone. Oh well, Prowl had other problems to deal with, like wracking his processor for any scrap of information that might help him not become a grayed out frame.

Finally he simply sighed, lifting a hand to rub at the base of his chevron.

“I don’t suppose you’ll be charitable and simply let me go?” Witches were strange magic users, dangerous—very very dangerous!—and dabbling in forbidden dark magics but often quirky. Simply asking might be ‘odd’ enough to give him a slightly higher chance at freedom. 

The witch, Jazz, laughed. Well, at least he hadn’t insulted the little monster.

“Cute,” Jazz stepped away, walking backwards into the dark dwelling with careful ease so as to keep the hunter in his line of sight. “But nah. I ain’t stupid, I know what ya are. Pretty though, all...elegant and powerful. Nice voice too.” 

Having nearly melted into the shadowed interior the witch paused, the slash of warm blue glowing in the dark turned as he gathered something off of _something_, perhaps a table? It was difficult to tell but there was the distinct sound of things being moved about.

Then there was a crash as something was knocked off whatever surface and fell to the floor. The sudden noise was startling and Prowl barely managed to contain his flinch, door wings not withstanding.

Jazz only laughed, if a bit sheepishly.

“Oops~ Wasn’t expectin’ company so I didn’t tidy up. Now--” The glowing band of blue turned to him again and Prowl only glared as the witch approached with an object in each hand. Charms? Charms were never a good thing when witches were involved.

“Ain’t got any interest in killin’ ya,” Jazz purred, holding out each hand, palm up, with a different charm in each. They were carved from the struts of some mechanimal—hopefully a mechanimal—and burnished to a smooth shine. One was longer and more jagged, some stylized creature with wings and...long things? The other was more easily identified as a stylized cyberwolf. “Pick one.”

“Absolutely not.” Prowl wasn’t taking some animal charm from a witch who currently held him captive! The suspicion he didn’t bother to hide only earned him an infuriating smile from the witch as he jiggled the charms at his cranky black and white hunter.

“Pick one, the one that calls t’ya the most, or I’ll pick one for ya. Besides, I ain’t gonna leave ya like that forever, ain’t no fun that way. Be a good lil’ hunter.”

When all that got him was as cool glare and the ‘good little hunter’ crossing his arms and flatly refusing, the smile fell and Jazz pouted.

Pouted.

Primus, this evil little wretch was ridiculous.

“I got others y’know, less nice ones. I can turn ya into a silica worm—wanna be a worm?” The charms jiggled in his hands again. “Pick one, worm, unless ya wanna be a lil’ legless wonder.”

Prowl knew this was a trick as he considered the two charms, his options dwindling. He did not want to be a worm, but being something other than himself wasn’t appealing either. There was no guarantee he’d be turned into whatever the charm represented either. All he knew for certain was that he wasn’t going to like whatever happened either way.

But if he could get away, even if turned into something… unnatural, at least there was the chance to escape and seek aid.

Perhaps from his brother, unpleasant as the prospect was.

He frowned at the though but reached out, slowly, having no other option other than to choose before something was chosen for him.

He really didn’t want to be a worm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Which one should he pick? Wolf or mystery thing? What do you, the cruel masses, think?


	3. Bug Report

Prowl gave the witch an unimpressed look before turning his optics down to the offered charms before him. His hand moved out, intent on taking the one he could at least identify only to have the stylized, magical charms of his immediate future doom pulled away.

“Ah-ah! Remember, pick what calls t’ya.” Slowly the witch offered his upturned hands again, one charm sitting in each palm as if they were innocent trinkets. “Don’t be hasty or ya might regret it.”

“I’m sure I’m going to regret it regardless.” The hunter muttered, giving the smiling heathen a sour expression before looking at the charms again. There was still the prior threat of being turned into a worm to consider.

He did not want to be a worm.

He did not trust Jazz, however—the little witch was a monster dabbling in unholy magics and worshiped false gods. But if he was warning Prowl to think more carefully then there was some...trick to this.

Because of course there was. Witches were very skilled at charming animals.

Either way, he was going to be more vulnerable to Jazz’s power.

The cyberwolf, while stylized, was an easy shape to identify. They were large, fast pack hunters that could pose a threat even to a well prepared traveler. They had also been domesticated into turbohounds and there was likely the trick—he’d become Jazz’s pet hound no doubt. 

The mortifying idea of being turned into some small lapdog, to be perched in that smug witch’s lap and pet while he did Primus knows what forbidden ritual or charmed some idiot into using some sinful magic concoction…

That was almost worse than being a worm. At least a worm could keep its dignity while it ate sand.

The other charm was more difficult for him, the hunter was an expert in the arcane—and how to combat it—but a naturalist he was not. This...creature had wings of some sort, and several long sticks piled under it. The back of its body was rounded and the front, at least he assumed it was the front, had what appeared to be some sort of horn sticking up from its head.

He really had no idea what the animal could be but he did like the idea of wings. Prowl doubted he’d be free to fly away but this was no domesticated pet animal or he’d be able to identify it.

Slowly he reached out, pale blue optics locked onto the more vibrant shine of the witch’s visor as he carefully plucked the strange, unknown animal charm from the dark hand.

“Interstin’.” Jazz purred, watching with pleasure as the hunter slowly curled white fingers around the charm, pulling it close so as to avoid any more contact with the witch. “Ya like crystals, huh?”

For a moment Prowl was perplexed but nodded—he did enjoy crystals very much. “Many do.”

Jazz’s smile only grew, taking on a sinister air and that was disconcerting on an entirely new level.

“Good.”

They stood, staring at one another for a long moment. Prowl was wary, waiting for whatever transmutive horror was to befall him while Jazz grinned with wicked delight. The charm was warm in Prowl’s hand, the faintest tingle of spellcraft tickled his plating where he gripped it.

He _couldn’t_ let go.

Jazz was murmured suddenly, the lilting flow of words was song-like but clearly a spell, a trigger that set the charm off. He moved back, leaving his hunter to panic—if the twitchy door wings were any indication—while he moved off to gather some other horrific magical impliment.

Or so Prowl assumed.

The charm was searing hot in his grip but he _couldn’t_ loosen his hold. It burned and the lick of magic stabbing into his fingers and through his circuitry was, while painful, not unbearable. Prowl bit back a hiss, grimacing at the heat but was far more concerned with the scrambled mess of code flashing over his HUD. 

What he could catch was similar to the schematics for altmode configuration—where things shifted and moved during transformation and how the resulting puzzle of frame parts fit together to finish the change. 

He felt the bite of transformation, the mechanisms catching as his plating suddenly shifted. 

The hunter shouted, alarmed by the sudden parting of his seams and folding of limbs. There was the lightheadedness of mass displacement on a massive scale as most of his mass fell into subspace and what was left continued to reconfigure and shift into something so very small.

Prowl really didn’t want to be a worm!

But he wasn’t—worms didn’t have wings and too-many legs.

Jazz had returned, kneeling down beside the much smaller, shifting and squirming hunter as the last microplates settled. Prowl didn’t move, unsure exactly how to just yet, and Jazz simply reached down and scooped him up in hand.

Prowl was tiny, and his shape so foreign, that it took him a few moments to run through what shape his body was in and how to move it. He did, indeed, have wings folding down on his back, but also too-many long stick-like legs and antenna, long and red as his chevron, adorning his very round head.

This…

This was almost as bad as the worm.

Prowl hopped, succeeding in only bumping harmlessly into the gentle cage of Jazz’s dark fingers as he was moved, carried, and deposited into a large glass jar. Hopping again, this time against the glass, proved utterly useless.

And he hadn’t quite figured out how to fly before a mesh cover was tied over the open top of the jar, trapping the very unhappy cricket inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 0:3c 
> 
> y'alls votes:   
(mystery) cricket - 8  
wolf - 6


	4. Just Admit It's Scurrying

One leg, two leg, three leg--

Prowl spent the evening—the witch had left him and his jar alone, the jar set on the floor near the wall opposite the entrance way where he’d been trapped—learning how to operate his new and unpleasant form. Hopping had been easy enough, if imprecise, but walking without fumbling around had been trickier.

It was an… interesting endeavor but it kept his mind occupied, focused on learning to move effectively rather than think about his situation beyond trying to become sufficient and escaping.

He was left alone for the evening, free to lap around his jar-prison and practice hopping, walking, running—he refused to acknowledge it as scurrying—and trying to learn to fly.

He was not good at flying, but glass crickets weren’t known for being excellent fliers to begin with. The process had lead to the thing glass crickets were known for, however.

Prowl hadn’t intended to rub the long, spindly hind leg against himself—against his new wings—and the vibrating sensation was far more startling than the sharp noise the action produced. A single chirp, imperfect as it was, drew that cursed witch out to loom over his jar.

The hunter-turned-cricket would have hidden just to spite Jazz but his jar was empty. 

Jazz plopped down, all his earlier slinking elegance replace with a more lazy and relaxed air, beside the jar on the floor and peered through the glass with a grin. In the dimness of the room at large the glowing band of blue was near blinding for Prowl, small as he was now.

“Gonna sing for me, lil’ hunter?”

Prowl didn’t answer, simply sitting perfectly still there in his jar.

“Aw, don’t be that way! I think ya sound nice.” Jazz slid down to lay on his side, head propped in a dark hand and all his dangly paraphernalia hanging down around his arm, longer strands clinking on the floor. “Not even gonna talk to me?”

Prowl did not answer. He had discovered he could still speak earlier, when trying to fly and subsequently doing a poor job—there had been a lot of cursing after he fell down the side of the glass. But the small… squeakiness of his voice in this form was unappealing. 

Humiliating. 

He wasn’t going to give this heathen monster the satisfaction of hearing it.

“Fine~ Guess I’ll go back to sleep. See ya in the mornin’, lil’ hunter. Gonna get ya some things for ya house.” Prowl seethed, unable to do anything in his rage but sit and glare as much as a cricket could glare. Jazz paid him no mind, only smiling at his tiny, transmutated prisoner, before getting up and sauntering off toward the side of the room to slip into some side room.

Prowl was left to crawl along in his rage, muttering a tiny curse when he was sure no one could hear.


	5. Jarrarium

The jar shifted and Prowl jerked awake, unsure when he’d fallen into recharge. His processor, most of which was hidden in subspace someplace with the rest of his mass, was sluggish as he woke, the sleepy and confused cricket unable to get himself coordinated enough before he was scooped into a dark hand—was it rescue?

Of course not, Prowl mentally smacked himself, scrambling around the tiny space of Jazz’s hand. He could see small slivers of light between fingers but he couldn’t squeeze through them despite his best efforts.

Prowl wondered if he could get his new mandibles a round the edge of a finger and bite.

He didn’t have enough time to try as the hand he was in suddenly opened and he found himself, while back in the jar, sitting on a soft bed of sand. Jazz still had his hand hovering above and Prowl watched him through the glass as the witch fished out chunks of blue-white, iridescent crystal, what he recognized as glass crystal, from a basket woven from thick cords of copper.

Prowl wondered where Jazz got some of his materials.

The hunter skittered out of the way as the hovering hand was replaced with the other one, the broken hunks of crystal placed down around the new layer of sand. The cricket within scampered but was less worried when it became clear Jazz was taking care not to injure him.

With the hunks of crystal set down, Jazz sprinkles in a handful of colorful glass beads—because, of course, Prowl had to come across the eccentric sort of heathen that decorated cricket terrariums—and replaced the woven mesh cover over the top of the jar.

Well… at least Prowl had places to hide to show his disdain for Jazz and his situation.

Not that the grinning lunatic seemed to mind, peering down at his captured hunter as the woeful cricket carefully moved around, investigating the crystals and looking for any advantage that might bring him. There was nothing particularly helpful, only the smell—which Prowl was pretty sure should be faint, given their size, but he was tiny and it was likely amplified because of that—of crystal.

It reminded him of the smell of filtered energon.

“Eat up, lil’ hunter,” Jazz sang. “I picked those for ya fresh. Maybe ya won’t be so angry once ya eat.”

Prowl was unimpressed and simply crawled behind one of the glittering, translucent crystals to sulk.

“Aw, c’mon, don’t be that way.” There was clear amusement in the witches voice, far too much cheer with a touch of sinister delight. “Ain’t nothin’ gonna change if we don’t talk, but sulk all ya want, just means ya stay in that jar longer.”

The cricket continued to sulk, stewing in his angrer and helpless humiliation. At least he felt less exposed now.

“...I guess,” He could hear Jazz murmured, leaning in close to the glass and trying to see Prowl without turning the jar. “If ya want regular energon—y’know, if ya don’t wanna gnaw on crystals like a good lil’ glass cricket—I could get that for ya but ya’d have to do somethin’ t’earn it.”

Prowl was left to consider that while the witch stood up and left, retreating to the far side of the round room and then up the dark, narrow passage that lead outside to do Primus knows what sort of heathenry.


	6. Belated Introductions

Jazz was still out, doing Primus knows what evil, while Prowl was left in his jar. He’d come out of sulking and tried to push some of the large chunks of crystal around with little success, having hoped to climb up to the top of his jarrarium.

So now he was gnawing on the edge of one crystal, finding his tiny frame hungry. It was a strange experience, gnawing hard, raw crystal and grinding the small, broken pieces in his weird cricket maw.

At least it tasted fine, if a bit...delicate—he’d grow tired of it soon, he already knew.

Regardless, Prowl gnawed, perched on the end of a crystal and clinging with his hook-like feet, and thought. Thinking was probably ill advised but he couldn’t help himself. 

He needed to escape.

The options available were limited. Prowl considered climbing up Jazz’s arm the next time it was within reach though the success rate on that was lower than flying up and chewing his way through the polymer mesh blocking the opening of the jar.

There was also the option of going along with the witch’s plans, whatever they may be, but there wasn’t enough information for Prowl to know if that was a good idea or a phenomenally poor one.

Probably the latter, witches were wicked things—he’d already been turned into vermin by going along with that little monster’s plan!

Remaining a tiny, furious, cricket in a jar like some pet was another option he adamantly refused to accept.

Munching away, he also considered the mechanics of his current state. 

The magic that had altered him was powerful, no mere illusory spell but something that had dug deep into his own coding, altering it to make the physical change very real and very permanent until the code was restored or rewritten again—he couldn’t even access his t-cog and his HUD was formatted differently as well.

Cursed witches and their dark magic.

There was nothing Prowl could think of to undo this, the usual forms of dispelling useless to him, even if he had proper hands, and his only hope lying with finding someone to aid him. That was if he could even find anyone who wasn’t a witch who knew how to help him.

Again, cursed witches and their dark magic!

When he was out of this jar and himself again he was going to strip that little heathen of all his power and disassemble him down to nothing! Perhaps he’d sell bits and pieces of the little glitch--

“Thinkin’ hard?”

Prowl hopped—launched—off the crystal and thunked uselessly against the side of the jar before immediately cursing the knee-jerk reaction of cricket frames to hop away from anything threatening. He was far too angry to stop the pitched-up, grindy vocalizer from spitting out a string of colorful curses.

Barricade would have been proud.

Of course this only made Jazz laugh, all mirth and amusement at the hunters misfortune—such an evil fragger shouldn’t have such a pretty laugh.

Prowl was going to take that grinning pitspawn apart even if he had to chew through him one wire at a time!

“Didn’t mean t’spook ya—not my fault ya weren’t payin’ attention.” Jazz was kneeling down beside the jar, smiling his too-gleeful smile down at the angry, muttering cricket at his mercy. “Got ya talkin’ so that’s a success I think. Now--”

There was a sudden glow, a bulbous glass vial of energon held between dark fingers wiggled near the glass within Prowl’s line of sight. “Want some? Ya seem fine eatin’ like a good lil’ critter but figured ya’d appreciate some variety.” 

The witch waited a moment, watching as the tiny hunter settled half behind a crystal to ‘glare.’ Prowl was seething again but there wasn’t much he could do—the prospect of consuming proper fuel was appealing, however.

So he made a point of climbing back out into the open and sitting in the middle of his glass prison.

“Hmmm~? I did say ya’d have to do somethin’ for me if ya wanted this, yeah? Talk to me, lil’ hunter. Ya gonna give me ya name this time?”

Silence.

“Ya must like bein’ a cricket—I did tell ya to pick what called t’ya.” Jazz tapped gently on the side of the jar with the vial of energon. “I don’t mind keepin’ ya forever, but if ya wanna be a pretty Praxian again then ya best get talkin’.”

The cricket shifted on his too-long legs.

“What’s it gonna be, lil’ hunter?”

“Prowl.” Even his name sounded ridiculous in this buzzing, squeaky voice.

“Prowl~” Jazz cooed, a mocking sweetness dripping from his tone as he repeated the name. “See? That wasn’t so hard.”

“Get fragged, heathen.”

Jazz only laughed his musical, too-amused laugh again and reached out to wrap the fingers of his empty hand around the wide neck of the jar.

“Dinner first—now hold tight.”


	7. Who's petty now?

“So, were ya hopin’ to just waltz on in and off me?” Jazz was lounging on his berth—if that shallow pit of a turborat nest full of crude cushions and colorful, patchwork sheets of polymer mesh and tarp could be called a berth—speaking to the cricket currently sipping up drops of energon that had been sprinkled over the crystals in his jar.

The witch had moved Prowl and his jar into the smaller room that was Jazz’s berthroom. The jar was set on a low shelf overlooking the berth, personal trinkets having been pushed gently to the side to make room.

“Bad move, y’know. Well--” Jazz paused, turning a playful grin toward his prisoner from where he was sprawled in his heathen nest. “Guess ya do know, considerin’ where y’at. How’s the energon?”

Prowl continued to sip, the process of drinking with a cricket maw very different than what he was used to. Surface tension was much more of a problem at this size.

He valiantly ignored the stubby horns with glinting wire, the shining blue visor slowly peeking over the edge of the shelf. He wasn’t going to look--

“Prowler~”

He was going to feed the annoying menace their own--

“**_Prowl._**”

Prowl paused at that tone, knowing he could not push too far—his current state was still extremely vulnerable and this creature had a great deal of power over him. And his designation—names were powerful things when it came to magic.

Jazz’s smile sharpened, clearing aware he had the hunter’s attention. 

“Good critter! Now I gotta question for ya.” Jazz leaned in close, resting his chin on the edge of the shelf—the position required had to be uncomfortable, the shelf was too low for the witch to be in any other position than a half kneel.

Eccentric, Prowl reminded himself.

“Do y’know why I didn’t kill ya?”

Now that was a good question. Prowl turned, moving his too-long legs carefully as he shifted where he perched, looking out through the glass at the glowing blue peering back at him. This witch could have easily killed him but—

“Punishment?” It was reasonable, after all. 

Jazz shook his head, careful not to disturb anything on the shelf. “Nah—well… maybe a lil’ bit but that’s just an added bonus. Try again?”

“I don’t know, nor do I care, I just want you to undo it.” So he could throttle the blasphemous little monster and introduce that grinning face into the floor. 

The bright smile vanished, becoming a pout that was clearly more for show—that visors glint didn’t look anything other than amused. “Guess ya gonna a critter for a while longer.” 

Jazz pulled away from the shelf, dropping back down to his turborat nest to go through a basket, this one was was woven of thick plastic cord, of colorful crystal shards.

Prowl was left to his own devices once again.


	8. Anti Lullaby

It had been a week and Prowl had not answered to Jazz’s satisfaction, so Prowl had spent the past week in the jar on Jazz’s shelf while the witch came and went, going about his business.

And Prowl was still a cricket.

He was able to move much easier now and had, when Jazz was in recharge, managed to fly up and cling to the polymer mesh trapping him inside. He spent the night chewing through the plastic and been in the process of crawling through the opening he’d made when Jazz caught him.

So now there was a woven metal mesh in its place, the finely woven wire much more difficult to get through.

It was currently night again, Jazz was still, recharging on the berth under the shelf while the hunter sat perched on one of the larger pieces of crystal he’d been gnawing on earlier. He was bored and feeling particularly agitated and petty after being ignored all day.

The silence of the room was shattered with the sharp chirping of cricket song, the stridulation self-soothing in a way. The vibrations set his mind at ease and he had the added hope of being disruptive! That witchy glitch couldn’t even complain either, since Prowl was doing proper cricket things.

Of course Prowl went silent the moment he saw movement, sitting innocently on his crystal as Jazz sat up, visor dim, to look at him. The witch was missing his usual smile, half out of recharge as he was, with his dangling embellishments tangled around his head. 

He’d be cute if he weren’t an evil, blasphemous witch.

They stared at each other for a long moment before Jazz slowly sank back down, the faint glow of his optic band flickering down and going dark.

The cricket only waited a moment longer before the loud, rhythmic chirping started up again.

And again, silence returned when the witch sat up, groggy visor peering into the jar at the silent, innocent glass cricket just sitting there. 

Another long moment.

Jazz had only settled into his berth again when the chirping continued.

Prowl enjoyed his new form for the first time that night.


	9. Pick Your Poison

“I don’t know.” Prowl groused, once again faced with the daily question of the witch’s motives. He didn’t know why he’d been ‘spared,’ turned into a tiny insecticon rather than killed.

“Oo~ No snark today, lil’ hunter?” Jazz was sitting in his berth pit, having taken Prowl out of the jar. Of course the cricket had tried to flee but dark, wittchy fingers kept him from scurrying away. A single try and flying failed with him being gently swatted from the air—the resulting experience of spinning wildly and thunking into the wall had kept him from trying again.

All in all, Prowl was less than pleased about being handled.

“I bet ya got somethin’ nasty to say but don’t want me squishin’ ya, huh?” The irate, but silent, cricket was pet with a finger. Prowl was sure if he kept withholding his anger he’d pop into a million tiny cricket pieces. 

Finally, having settled in Jazz’s hand and endured his weird petting—fragging weird witch, petting bugs—Prowl turned his bulbous head to look up at his captor. “I do, but I would rather we move on to you asking me some other question, so please: Why did you not simply kill me?”

Jazz only smiled more widely, a sharp edge creeping into his expression that had Prowl instantly regret asking—but he honestly hadn’t been able to guess. The dark helm tipped to the right, the dangling wires glinting in the dim light.

He did not like the cunning gleam in the shining visor.

“Didn’t wanna ruin somethin’ special.” Came the easy reply as the witch carefully got out of the nest that was his berth. Prowl shifted in Jazz’s hand, resisting the urge to flee once more as he was placed carefully—always with such care—back into the jar and locked inside.

Settled in the soft sand, the hunter looked out through the glass wall of the jar as Jazz darted out of the room—far too enthusiastically for his liking—leaving Prowl alone.

That probably wasn’t good.

Prowl was alone for some time, though he could hear sounds coming from the other room, and he wondered would sort of wicked mischief the witch was up to. It was probably something nefarious—something Prowl wouldn’t like.

And, as if summoned by his uneasy thoughts, Jazz came slinking back in to the cluttered berthroom to collect the jarrarium, settling on the floor with the jar sitting in his lap.

“Now, Prowler, time for another choice.” Dear Primus no, was **this** how he finally ended up a worm?

The woven metal mesh was removed from the top of the jar and dark fingers carefully lowered a shallow dish onto the sand, forcing the wary cricket to scramble out of the way on all his too-long legs. Small as the dish was, it looked quite large to Prowl.

The dish was hammered pewter, plain and simple, and he suspected Jazz had made it himself. The inside was burnished smooth and a small amount of shimmering liquid say in the middle.  
Two liquids—neither mixing—sitting like two glistening beads of mercury beside each other.

Already Prowl did not like this, cautiously peeking over edge of the dish at the swirling, metallic particles in the blue and green puddles. There was certainly magic here but Prowl wasn’t able to tell if it felt so subtle because it appeared to be potions or if being a cricket made his sensitivities weaker.

“Ya can drink one or the other.” Jazz started, pointing to first the green blog of liquid, then the blue. “Sure ya gussed they each do somethin’ different—or!” The maliciously gleeful cackle was not putting Prowl at ease. 

“There’s option three,” The witch held up three fingers, as if the cricket was unable to count, while pulling out a small, round bottle, the contents a thick, glowing red liquid. “We skip a few steps and ya have a sip o’this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No hints this time >:3 So should Prowl drink the tamer blue or green potions? Or the clearly sketchy red stuff?


	10. The Calm

The bottle of ominously glowing red—Prowl was sure there was energon mixed in there—liquid was set down beside the jar, the witch grinning down from above as the hapless cricket considered his options.

He knew there was a fourth option, refusing to drink any of the potions would simply mean remaining as he was. Even drinking the mystery liquids did not mean he’d be free of this form, but it was progress in whatever twisted plan this heathen devil was working at.

And Prowl could do nothing as he was now, much to his chagrin. 

“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me how each will affect me?” There was even less information to go on than last time—at least the charms had shapes! This… this was making a guess of the vaguest feeling of magic and the ominous glee of the witch supplying him with mystery magic elixirs.

Jazz practically cackled, all his dangling beads clattering against his arms and hood as he threw his head back and laughed—it was full on maniacal! And clearly for show.

Prowl would have put his face into his palms if he had palms.

“I’ll take that as a no.” The woes of a hunter-turned-cricket. He would have taken Barricade’s ridicule over this nonsense--

The sudden shadow falling over him had Prowl shifting on his too-long legs, having to turn most of his weird, crickety body in order to look strait up at the glowing blue visor looking down through the top of the jar. 

“Remember what I told ya last time?” Prowl had to think a moment, recalling the moments before he became this ineffectual creature.

He was still unsure, but he remembered the hastiness of his decision being halted just before he’d picked up one of the charms. “Choose what calls to me?” 

Jazz have a nod but said nothing more.

Prowl didn’t like this. _He did not like this at all._ But he considered each liquid—the two within easy reach as well as the third, the bottle still on the other side of the glass—and how he felt about them. Turly, the hunter should be cautious, and he suspected each one would be an unpleasant experience.

It was likely a matter of degree.

Jazz watched avidly as his cricket prisoner slowly walked—mostly to avoid anything fast enough to be considered a ‘scurry’--around the dish to settle between it and the jar wall. Each liquid was given a good long look.

The pool of blue-green, neatly separated, glittered with swirling particles throughout. The green was familiar, Prowl felt, but in a mundane way. After another moment of observing what was within easy access, he turned to the bottle outside the jar. 

The glowing red liquid did not have the same swirling eddies of metallic particles the other colors held, instead there was a depth to the color, a mix of vibrant red and a deeper, darker color that made the entire bottle appear more like a great pool.

But it was also, given the glee Jazz had displayed when drawing it out, the most likely to cause him great distress.

Not that he wasn’t in great distress already, what with being a **cricket.**

But he did not need to speak up, it seemed the witch was perceptive even to crickets, and the shallow dish was quickly collected from his jar. “Ya sure~?”

The malicious glee was gone, the witch’s smile more gentle as he held up the bottle—Prowl thought he looked downright friendly with that face, rather than some wicked creature of forbidden magic and blasphemy.

“Would you prefer I second guess myself?” He was annoyed already, the apprehension bubbling up under the more apparent anger.

Jazz paid him no mind, swallowing the small amount of liquid in the shallow dish himslef—no doubt the...dosage was minuscule for a full sized mech—and poured a small pool into the empty vessel and placing inside the jar. 

Prowl hesitates, creeping over to the dish to peer at the glowing red liquid, too dark to be energon but he can small it.

He really shouldn’t, this was dark magic--

“Drink, Prowl.”

The soft, serious tone had the hunter pause, turning to peer up at the witch watching him with utter calm. It was incredibly unnerving, considering the behavior he’d seen from Jazz in the past, but there was no threat or horrific glee to be found in the unreadable expression staring down at him.

So Prowl drank, dipping his mandibles into the liquid—thinner than he thought it should be. It was rich with mineral flavor, almost too much so, and cloyingly sweet. It felt sticky in his jaws and Prowl wondered if getting it into the fine seams of his current form would end badly should it dry tacky.

Despite the taste, far too sweet for his liking, he found it wasn’t very filling. Prowl didn’t think glass crickets had very large tanks to store energon but he managed to sip down most of the offered liquid before he pulled away.

There was no different that Prowl could perceive, even the faint tingly of magic in his abdomen seemed mild. He could only watch, vague dread and confusion taking hold, as Jazz collected the dish and simply say it beside him. Waiting.

It was an hour later, the two of them having sat in perfect silence, that Prowl’s world bled into chaos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all voted real close~! 
> 
> Let me SEE - Blue: 8  
LET ME HEAR - Green: 0  
Just fuck my shit up - Red: 10
> 
> You like my labeling? Lol, no one voted for green!!!
> 
> To clarify: Blue would have let him see things and green would have let him hear things.
> 
> Red does all that and a bit more but you'll see that next chapter.


	11. The Storm

Prowl was sinking, the world was heavy as the sand tried to swallow him. It was so slow, though, and he felt no fear—it was only after the sensation of slowly falling manifested that the colors around him began to bleed into one another.

Distinct shapes lost their edges, the glass of the jar wobbled, boiling in slow motion, as he struggled out of the sand that was swallowing-not swallowing him.

There was a cacophony of sound. Muffled babbling, the words not words at all, and distant, resonant shrieks of something the hunter instinctively tagged as sentient but knew belonged to no mecha. 

Halos of rainbow light vibrated around the oddly flat crystals around him, the strange two-dimensional gray contrasted with the pulsing, wobbling shapes of moving color. He thought he could see lines of code in the crystals, where light met shadow.

_Things_ melted in and out of the throbbing world around him. Slithering shapes, creature-esque, hovered at the periphery of his vision, as if curious but to wary to come close. 

Somewhere ahead there was something immeasurably bright, Prowl couldn’t bare to look at it as he struggled to make sense of his surroundings. He put his hand—and it was a hand—down in the sand and found his fingers, his hand, his arm was glowing a warm, pale gold. 

Particles of light seemed to coalesce, drawn together to make him—to fill him.

Prowl stood up, looking down at himself. He was golden, and still small, but his parts were as they should be. Tiny as a cricket but himself, he was golden light and bright—it should hurt his optics but the light that was him, though very bright, was warm and oddly gentle. 

He turned to look past the boiling glass of the jar.

The world beyond his prison was _alive._ Flashing cascades of flat, but bright, geometric shapes spilled down a wall, the brightly colored tarp behind them slowly melted and bubbled in a similar manner to the jar walls.

More _things_ moved, large shadows and small, darting lights with too-many legs and odd fins that swamp through the chaos. He could never quite make them out when he looked, the wriggling shapes fading into the riot of color and sound.

The blinding light directly before him shifted, moving toward him, and Prowl stepped back. He felt heavy, as if submerged in some viscous liquid, but then the world tilted as the bright light was all around him.

He tried to shout, unsure if he made a sound—surely he could shout? But the sensation of moving very quickly, despite the heavy not-sea that seemed to be all around him, did not stop. Until it did.

Prowl could see the world again, roiling, shifting color as it was, and was staring up at a great golden figure of light. **Primus**—his first thought—and he gaped up at the glowing giant. There was no face, it was too bright, but Prowl thought Primus was smiling.

But no, he remembered, he’d drank something--

Primus was no Primus, and as Prowl stared, the dense particles of light that made the whole seemed to vibrate. There was a sound, brighter and more sharp than the endless swirling rush of not-waves, and he knew it was a laugh.

But it was not unkind.

“We’re th’same.” Prowl heard, the words muddied in the noise yet somehow clear. He stared up at Jazz, the witch, giant and glowing gold as he himself did, unsure what to feel—he seemed unable to be afraid.

“Prowl.” 

The world glitched, or maybe it was him, and the roiling, melting world of _things_ skipped, the dripping colors pixelated—the world tore while Prowl floundered to perceive.

Cradled in a glowing palm, the hunter drowned in what had always been there.


	12. But What Does It Mean?!

“Prowler~”

Prowl was staring out through the glass wall beside him, lost in the refracted sunlight amid the dead crystals. Even without their color they were beautiful—the dim light of Cybertron’s distant star catching and scattering into rainbow of glittering light.

“Prowler!”

He’d woken to a hazy world of light some time ago to find himself resting in the sand of his jar out in the dim, warm sunshine. It was peaceful, quiet, and the dead forest in the wastes around them was beautiful.

If only he could pull his thoughts together.

“I know y’aint broke, lil’ hunter.” Jazz was above him, peering down into the jar and Prowl managed to wiggle a too-long cricket leg—he’d been too out of it as coherent thought slowly returned to regret being an insecticon still—out of the way as a dark digit poked him. 

_Things_ still hovered at the edge of his vision, harder to see than before, but at least the world was no longer melting. The halos remained.

Jazz still held a faint glow.

“What--” His voice, still scratchy and too high, was also strained as if he’d been screaming—maybe he had? He didn’t remember anything beyond chaotic flashes of imagery and feeling. “Did you do to me?”

The finger poked him again and the spindly-legged creature that was Prowl moved, if sluggishly, to turn his long body to get a better look at the heathen smiling down at him. Smiling like he knew too much.

The glitch.

He was ‘cajoled’--scooped despite his sluggish, useless attempt to remain unheld—onto Jazz’s fingers only to be deposited on one of the crystals in his prison. He slid off the digit to find droplets of energon waiting for him, hunger sprouting from the void as he immediately went to sipping them up.

“I let ya see the other side o’the world. The reflections--the shadows.” The witch chimed, pleased with their conversation. At least he’d given Prowl an answer. “Ya saw and heard and felt. Ya **were.** Like touchin’ a mirror and fallin’ through to the other side.”

Well that wasn’t at all comforting.

He finished his current droplet, happy to have the liquid fuel rather than having to gnaw his way to a full tank. “You said we were the same.” Prowl crawled forward to work on another drop of glowing pink—he didn’t think he’d ever been this hungry before.

Witches and their potions.

“We are~” Jazz purred, the usual malicious smugness if his voice was now more a gloating pride. “Ya just too stubborn to get it.”

Prowl paused. “Get what?”

“Exactly!” There was that sharp, less-than-kind grin again.

The cricket went back to sipping his post-hallucination fuel, watching as Jazz stood up and wandered off to climb over the dead crystals and dig around between them. The other bot was still covered in painted glyphs, his hanging...paraphernalia glittering in the rainbow light.

Jass looked like he belonged out here, in the waste, like some ancient primitive in a far off time.

The hunter had no idea what the witch meant—they were most definitely not the same. Prowl was a civilized, Primus revering mech who’d been trained to weed out the heathen monsters that dabbled in dark magics. Things like Jazz, a blasphemous worshiper of dark and forbidden things.

Prowl wouldn’t be the slightest bit surprised if Jazz had killed some poor mech for the sake of ritual.

Prowl had almost been killed by simply walking into the witch’s domain.

Still, the potion he’d been subjected too was no mere drug—he’d felt the magic in it—but the effects were strange and unknown to him, despite his own knowledge. 

They had both been filled with glowing light. He thought Jazz was _Primus._ Uhg.

Prowl was still ruminating on his foolish, magic-induced idiocy when Jazz returned, scooping up the jar with and easy motion, and his pet hunter back into the dark rooms under the pile of dead crystal.

Prowl had a lot to think about.


	13. The Great Escape!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> e.e getting ready for Thanksgiving here so my energy is a little meh--also I FORGOT THE YEAST FOR BREAD UHG NOW I HAVE TO GO BACK TO THE STORE!!!
> 
> That aside, please have another installment in CRICKET ADVENTURES!

A pearly, iridescent glass cricket sat peering down from the edge of the shelf, considering its options. The witch was gone for the moment, the cluttered and colorful berthroom free of his playful taunts and musical laugh—leaving the cricket to its own devices.

Too-long legs, sticks of pearly white marred with black bands, shifted, slowly easing the long body closer to the edge and the pit of cushions below. The pillows and plastic meshes below would be daunting to climb through, the use of flight something the cricket wished to save its energy for.

The cricket jumped, leaping forward into open air before plummeting down to plop onto a green pillow. It wasn’t graceful, by any means, the awkward creature scrambling to regain its barrings before beginning to walk—crawl, really—though the rolling landscape of the witch’s berth.

Prowl had escaped the jar.

Perhaps Jazz though his pet hunter was still debilitated by the potion and its strange effects—which wasn’t wholly untrue, there were still halos chromatic glitter anything bright. It made the light glinting off the witch’s wires and beads blinding—but Prowl wasn’t so out of sorts he couldn’t take advantage of a given oppurtunity.

Like a lazily tied cord keeping the metallic mesh over the top of his jar.

A bit of pushing and a few full body cricket impacts had loosened the tie and Prowl had crawled free. And now he’d ejected himself from the shelve his jar was on in his bid for freedom.

As he clambered over the folds of a blanket, the synthetic weave easy for his little cricket feet to catch onto, he thought of what to do once he got outside. The nearest town was a days more than half a days journey for a mech and he couldn’t guess how long it would take to get there as he was now.

He climbed a pillow and turned, carefully maneuvering himself, before hopping across to another cushion and scrambling up. And another hop—that was surprisingly effective, if a bit jarring from a visual standpoint.

The hunter-cricket continued on this way, plotting out how he would survive long enough to get to town while simultaneously traversing the berth that was no less a turborat nest and more a soft expanse of pits and mounds. 

Prowl eventually made it to out of the soft pit, hopping down to the smooth floor to run—it was not scurrying—for the doorway. From the floor the room looked much larger than he knew it to be, his spindly legs skittering over the floor as quickly as he could.

It still took longer than he liked to reach the doorway and crawl under the flap of tarp acting as the door. Cursing, Prowl slowed as he crept along the wall, following the round curve of the room to hide behind a collection of tall storage baskets to rest. 

He was already tired.

It was clear this would be more difficult than initially anticipated—Prowl knew his endurance was less in this tiny form but he didn’t think he’d be winded before eve getting outside! So it was time to reevaluate his plans.

Outside was the first step, and after resting for a short while, simply enjoying the darkness behind the baskets, the hunter-turned-cricket decided to take the speedier course rather than follow the curved wall. 

Slender legs, too-many still for his liking, hurried across the floor as he ran for the center of the room. There were clear signs of magic circles and fires being burnt there and as Prowl neared the boundary between the floor and the ritual space he stopped.

Magic tingled over his tiny, misshapen insectoid body. 

Prowl reminded himself to be cautious—being too careless had landed him in this mess to begin with. Slowly he edged around the tainted—if what Jazz got up to was the usual sorts of wicked magics any witch of his caliber should then the entire building was tainted but here more so—circular area. 

Slowly the cricket moved around the perimeter, coming around on the far side and crawling straight across, once more, toward the narrow passageway that lead outside. It was only when he approached the incline that he paused.

A cricket couldn’t dispel magic, not that he knew of, and this was where Prowl gotten himself trapped when he’d first come here.

Ah—but this form did have some advantages.

Glass crickets were not know for their flying despite the ability to do so. They were clumsy in the air and never went very far. 

Prowl didn’t have to go far.

It took a hop to get him airborne, the strange wings still felt very foreign—concerning that the rest of being a cricket had become somewhat familiar-- but he managed. Prowl flew toward the wall near the ceiling, up by the narrow opening of the passageway. He grabbed onto the carved surface with less confidence than he was pretending to have, managing to cling well enough to not fall.

Surely there would be no traps here? 

He didn’t bet on it but it was still less likely up here than on the floor where a mech would step. It was with that thought that he cautiously, afraid he’d lose his grip and tumble down to the floor, crept along the wall and into the passage.

Prowl could make out the far of doorway leading outside, the open archway blazing with light and color beyond. Now he simply had to get out there before tiring himself out.


	14. Cricket Life Is Hard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> :V Phew, Thanksgiving prep and then getting a Christmas tree sure is distracting! Anyway, continuing on with cricket adventures!

Prowl slumped his tiny body in the hidden shadows of the haphazardly stacked crystals making up the witch’s lair. His journey from the jarrarium prison to outside of the building—if it could be called that—had been more exhausting than anticipated. Glass crickets were weaker than he imagined.

He would need to reconsider his next steps, his escape would need to be planned in smaller steps to accommodate his form. Spindly cricket legs only let one run—he still refused to admit is was scurrying—very quickly and flight, while good for short bursts, wasn’t viable long term.

At least he wasn’t a worm.

Prowl looked out at the dead forest surrounding the witch’s home. It was quiet and still with no sign of Jazz that he could discern. The Wastes were oddly beautiful from this angle—that was, very close to the ground—and Prowl still found the lingering effects of the potions till at work where the light glinted off the dead crystals.

He decided he would rest a little while longer before headed out toward the nearest town. There was no conceivable way he’d be able to reach town by nightfall but getting away from this place was top priority—he could find a shelter to rest along the way.

Being small meant there were lots of little places to hide.

So Prowl rested for a little while, letting the fatigue in his weird insectoid frame fade before crawling out of his hiding spot and cautiously scurrying—now it was a proper scurry—from one shadow to the next. He didn’t want to be seen in the event Jazz was lurking around without his notice, and once he had spent a good deal of time moving away from the menacing structure that was the heathen monster’s home, his pace became more leisured.

Cricket life was arduous. 

It was nearing evening, the shadows long and dark, when Prowl had spotted the witch. Jazz was climbing down a hill, one of the woven baskets in hand, and murmuring something musical that didn’t reek of magic for once. The hunter pressed in close against a fallen crystal branch, perfectly still in the shadow, as he watch.

The witch strolled right past him.

Looking back, following the path Jazz made toward his home, Prowl could only despair at the distance he’d made—the witch’s hut was still within sight. He’d be traveling for much longer than anticipated.

Well—there was nothing for it. He waited until Jazz was inside before he turned and continued onward, heedless of the night closing in around him. He could recharge later.


	15. This Isn't So Hard

It was dark and the night was far more ominous than Prowl had imagined. Conceptually he understood that being a glass cricket would make most things more difficult, but the plethora of sounds, some echoing the cries in that strange throbbing noise of his hallucinations, were unsettling.

Things were quiet when mecha were around but not so for tiny, helpless insecticons.

The hunter crawled along the edge of a spindly, dead crystal, looking for danger. He saw none but that didn’t mean much—he’d nearly climbed onto a very still turbofox earlier and it had startled him at how oblivious he could be.

He blamed it entirely on the senses available to him in this form.

Slowly, edging out of the safety In the shadows of the crystal, Prowl moved across the open terrain towards the next place of safety—a nondescript pile of metallic stone-- where he could hide. Once nestled between the rocks, safe, Prowl looked out to his next goal.

He had to get to the top of that hill.

So, again moving out from his cover to crawl across the open ground toward his next temporary safety, Prowl moved. As he did he thought, wondering what that heathen witch was doing now. Surely his absence had been noted, Jazz had too much interest in his pet hunter to not notice the empty jar. 

Maybe Jazz didn’t care, leaving the hapless hunter to struggle in the wilderness as a cricket, assured that Prowl would never be a threat to him again. He hadn’t seen a sign of the witch since he’d seen him returning to his lair of blasphemy earlier.

Prowl ran—once again refusing to admit it was scurrying—on all his too-long legs up the slope of the hill. The incline wasn’t too much of a problem, he found, and assumed it was due to the lack of mass he had now. And while it took a little longer to actually get up the hill, he was only winded from the distance rather than scrambling upward against gravity.

He’d have to rest again soon.

Prowl looked out over the hill, easily spotting the way he’d originally come out here from town. There were more fills, rolling and evening terrain, but he knew which way to go. Prowl considered his options and decided on simply moving in as straight a line as he could manage would be best.

It wasn’t like anyone would pay mind to a cricket should they cross paths—he only had to be cautious that another mechanimal wouldn’t take interest.

Did he just accept being a mechanimal himself?

Feeling exposed up on the hill he moved, scrawling down the other side toward a small pile of fallen crystal as dead as the rest. He could hide in there and rest for a little while. Prowl was wary of actually recharging but knew he would have to eventually.

Maybe he could find a nook in one of the splintered branches to hide in for a nap—it was chilly and he was tired.

The pile of dead crystal proved suitable for napping, there were no overlarge gaps for a turbofox or turborat to crawl in after him and the enclosed space had trapped the lingering warmth of the afternoon. Prowl settled down against on of the crystals, refusing to look at the faint reflection of himself in the translucent, colorless surface.

A short recharge would do nicely, then he could carry on with his great trek across the Wastes. 

The world settled around him and Prowl drifted of into sleep, his tired little body more than thankful for the reprieve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHOICES AGAIN!!! So, here we got your choices:
> 
> WORST alarm clock  
or   
Unwanted hug


	16. The Great Misnake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, the story would be over if this was the actual end!
> 
> Y'all were so excited for the hug which won out with 7 votes!
> 
> The alarmclock would have been a bird pecking from above with a stabby beak.

_The little witch screamed, fleeing as he looked back over his shoulder in terror. All Jazz’s dangling beads sparkled as he scrambled out of the way of a giant, spindly claw of a foot. A cricket’s foot. _

_The haphazard stacks of dead crystal that roofed his evil lair were smashed beneath his might and the witch failed, begging for mercy and the salvation of Primus. It was a lie—a trick! The heathen beast was only seeking to save himself._

_The sky blazed above, a roiling expanse of molten fire to rain down and purify all in the giant cricket’s wake. Soon the--_

Prowl woke from his—admittedly ridiculous, now that he was awake enough to process—revenge fueled dream at the smooth slide of something gliding against his too-long legs. It was still dark in his little hidey hole under the crystals and it took him a long moment to make out things clearly.

There was something moving near him, something long and...oh.

Prowl hopped forward, which in hindsight was perhaps a bad idea but curse the cricket body’s reflex of just boinking away, and over the slithering thing in his sleeping spot. Of course this only drew the razor snake’s attention and it spun around to hone in on the source of movement.

Prowl tried to flee, stress skyrocketing as he hop-scurried toward an exit only to be caught in the squeeze of both jaws and coiling snake. He struggled, screeching static as small, needle-like teeth bit into his thin, interlocking plating—razor snakes were venomous and Prowl had no way of knowing if he’d been envenomed as his flailing legs were pressed down in within tightening coils.

Not good--**NOT GOOD!**

All his struggling proved useless and the hunter-turned-cricket soon found himself exhausted. Was it venom? He felt lightheaded and panicky, but that was expected given the dire circumstances.

This was how he would end.

Prowl raged at the thought—the humiliation—but could do nothing about it as the sharp sting of needle-teeth shifting as the razor snake shifted its hold. He was going to be eaten by a razor snake and no one would ever know what had happened to him.

His brother might have found it humorous if they weren’t related.

The prick of teeth left him eventually, though by then Prowl was too exhausted and squeezed too tightly to move. Something shifted in his hazy vision and something tickled the red antennae that had once been his chevron.

A flickering tongue.

The shifting shape—the razor snake’s head—drew closer as it flicked out the delicate foil tongue once more. Prowl tried to wriggle, tiny vocalizer spattering out useless whispers of static. He saw the jaws open.

Everything went dark.


	17. You Tried

He was going to die.

It was dark. Dark and cool and _moist_ in all the worst, unpleasant ways. Pressed down on all sides, squeezed, Prowl couldn’t move as the tough, rubbery material enclosing him rippled against his body.

How long had it been? He wasn’t sure, panicked and on the razors edge of despair.

He burned—the moisture itched and throbbed with heat, pain between the seams of his strange plating indicated acid and the simply readout on his HUD confirm damage, though there was no actual words there for him to read.

Prowl was going to die, eaten alive by a razor snake.

The pressure tightened around him and there was a strange, muffled sound beyond the snakey walls pressing down on him. The sudden sensation of being flipped and spun, know he did not move within the contracting death tube he was trapped within.

Then the darkness was split with light.

Two of the three long, spindly legs on his left flailed in the suddenly open and cool air before something solid caught the struggling limbs in a gentle, firm grip. Prowl struggled, pulling against the thing holding him as it tugged gently.

The moment his optics compensated fro the sudden shift in brightness he could make out dark fingers and the sparkle of hanging wire and glass beads the color of energon.

Jazz.

Prowl wasn’t sure if he was elated or miserable at the revaluation, but for the moment the cricket found pulling himself from the split belly of the snake and onto the waiting hand appealing.

“Got yaself into trouble, lil’ hunter?” The witch crooned, still keeping a grip on two of Prowl’s legs—the hunter could only surmise it was to prevent another escape attempt so soon. That was fine, Prowl didn’t move once he’d climbed onto Jazz’s finger, content to perch on what was not the inside of a razor snake.

“Well?” Jazz asked, clear amusement in his voice—had he not been worried? Not that Prowl cared.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Prowl griped, scratchy, high pitched vocalizer still a bit frazzled from his panicked screeching not too long ago.

The little heathen just laughed and stood up from where he’d been kneeling on the ground, walking with a leisurely confidence back towards his home. Prowl sulked but said nothing, feigning disinterest as he sat on Jazz’s hand and tried to figure out what to do about the lingering digestive acids clinging to his weird frame.

The walk didn’t take very long—Prowl had thought he’d made more progress but the world was much larger when one was so small. Or, perhaps, the snake had inadvertently slithered back the way Prowl had come after swallowing its would-be meal. 

As it was, the snake was dead—Jazz still held it’s slowly writhing body in his other hand—and Prowl was not, so that was a success in not dying. Not that his was particularly thrilled to be brought down into the witch’s home once more.

The snake was tossed in a pot, its slender, gray frame writhing still, while Prowl was carted over to a self with several bowls and jugs both on the shelf itself and on the floor below. He could only watch, clinging to the dark hand below him, as Jazz picked up a smaller silvery bowl—placed in the same hand Prowl was attached too—and reached down to lift a heavy lid off a steel gray pot. 

There smell immediately identified the liquid contents as solvent and the small bowl was half filled with it soon enough. Once the lid was replaced, Prowl was unceremoniously flicked into the little bowl to flail in the solvent and curse at the rough treatment.

Jazz snickered. 

And then proceeded to jostle the bowl, sending his cricket prisoner tumbling unsteadily in the sloshing liquid.

Prowl was _livid._


	18. Talk Over Dinner

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [InMoNochrome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InMoNochrome/pseuds/InMoNochrome) [drew this ABSOLUTELY PERFECT image of our wickedly witchy Jazz and his smol cricket Prowl. PLEASE LOOK AT IT AND APPRECIATE IT IT IS SO GOOD! 😭 ](https://theparallelwall.tumblr.com/image/189542282142)

Prowl gave the droplets of energon a baleful look—he did not need to be fed this way. The witch only continued to offer the globules that clung to the top of his clawed digit, watching in amusement as the cricket finally surrendered and sipped up the offered fuel.

He was hungry, after his little adventure, and while there had been many crystals all around him they’d all been dead and useless for food.

Woe the tragic life of a cricket.

They were in Jazz’s berth—Prowl still wasn’t sure if it was a berth or a nest—where the witch was lounging and his tiny, exhausted prisoner sat placidly on the top of a bent knee. He was too tired to try and flee now, and with the witch here he doubted he’d get anywhere anyway.

He was being hand fed and wasn’t that demoralizing?

But Prowl didn’t complain, his earlier irritation from his ‘bath’ simmering down—Jazz had seemed thoroughly delighted at his fury. 

Now he was warm and fed, even if he was still a cricket.

At least he wasn’t inside an overgrown worm.

“Thank you.” It was begrudgingly given as Prowl was reluctant to thank the little monster for anything, but he was grateful of the rescue. He still wasn’t sure how he’d been found—Probably some illicit magic. 

Jazz smiled, bright and lacking the usual trace of sinister delight, and very carefully pet along the scarlet red antennae that had once been Prowl’s chevron with index finger of his other hand—the other was busy collecting more droplets to feed the hapless glass cricket.

It felt nice, if a bit condescending.

Again, Prowl was struck with the thought that such a pretty smile should not belong to a witch. Perhaps that was part of it, then? A bewitching smile.

“You’re welcome, Prowl.” The witch crood, offering more energon for Prowl to sip up from his fingertip. “I worried for ya, y’know? Hadn’t realized ya’d gotten outside at first—sneaky thing.” Jazz continued his gentle antennae petting, the slender appendages twitching and waving without any consent from the cricket they were attached too. 

Prowl compared it to the hopping—something this small frame just _did,_ regardless of his own desires.

“How did you locate me?” Prowl was curious and, while he was sure he’d get some cryptic answer, he might as well try. Last time he had asked directly he’d gotten an answer, even if it had been...unhelpful in any way.

Jazz paused his petting, shifting slightly where he lounged like some heathen king amid his nest. “Just looked. We’re the same so it ain’t hard.”

Ah, there was that unhelpful, semi-cryptic answer.

“And what does that mean?” There was an edge of irritation, exasperation with the witch and his mystic speech.

Jazz only smiled that too-knowing smile that set the hunter on edge.

“I could show ya—but ya gotta be willin’ to listen. To see.” Prowl had ‘seen’ plenty when he drank that potion and didn’t want a repeat, but Jazz seemed to be speaking of something else. “I know that’s hard for ya, bein’ a hunter and all. How’d y’end up one anyway?”

Prowl wasn’t sure he liked this line of conversation anymore and not just because of the sudden interest in his own background. “My family.” Simple enough.

“Ah~” Jazz shifted again, getting more comfortable and flicking one of the beaded strands of wire from where it caught in the shoulder joint. “Gotcha—Well! Hunters like to dismiss too much, throw it out and not look or whatever. Ya wanna know how we’re the same? Gotta be willin’ to not dismiss so quickly.”

That sounded suspicious because of course it sounded suspicious. Witches.

“I am willing to listen, but do not expect me to believe anything you say.”

Jazz only smiled, pleased with whatever victory he’d apparently won.


	19. What's A Witch: According to Prowl

“Tell me what I am, Prowler.” Jazz was sitting on the floor of the main room of his home, the large circular area had very little in way of furniture but there were shelves and neat piles of jugs, pots, or storage boxes in out of the way areas. 

Currently the witch was sitting near the wall farthest from the entrance, fiddling with the only real table in the room.

Prowl had, once again, been confined to his jar. He was on top of the table, however, surrounded by weird carved totems and other trinkets that set his instincts off. Magic things—Jazz was setting up some sort of little alter beside the jar, giving the hunter an easy view.

“A witch who takes great delight in my misfortune.” Prowl muttered, small vocalizer taking the sting out of his griping. 

Jazz snickered, focused on arranging a collection of… things. A bit of crystal—Prowl’s traitorous cricket appetites thought that one would taste nice—some swirling shape carved from in a silvery metal, glass beads strung together with tiny glyphs carved into each one. 

“Ya flatter me, Prowl—but what is a witch? C’mon, I know ya got all kindsa nasty things to say about witches~”

The cricket only turned on his crystal perch, obstinately chewing at the edge of it—listen to that faint, neigh inaudible grinding! Take that, witch!

Of course Jazz only turned, judging the jar with his elbow and nearly toppling his tiny captive off his meal and into the soft bed of sand at the bottom. Evil little heathen! 

Fine.

“A witch is a practitioner of unholy magic. Witches often worship or pay respects to heathen spirits or deities. They also tend to do... unpleasant things to people, either as part of their blasphemous belief or out of malice—they seem to have a lot of malice.” It was nearly a recital and clearly something he had been taught long ago.

Jazz was leaning against the table, weight on his forearms, the slash of blue that was his visor peering down at the jarrarium and the cricket within. “And who decided that?”

“The Temple-”

The witch snorted and Prowl paused, but after a moment of Jazz simply smiling down at him he continued, if slowly.

“The Temple of Primus.”

“Uh huh, and--” Jazz lifted a hand to wiggle dark, clawed digits at nothing in particular. “What makes them right? Clearly what I practice works.” A gesture at Prowl, the cricket, who was only a cricket because a witch had turned him into one. “So why is their practice right and mine wrong?”

Jazz returned to fussing with his alter as Prowl mulled that over. Why was the witch’s magic and ritual so wrong? Well, there were a lot of dead things involved—mechanimal and mecha both.

“The priests want ya to do as they say, to control and have all the power to themselves.” Jazz continued, not looking up from where he was carefully scoring a series of markings around each of the objects. “But there’s other power, more real. My power—yers too, if ya want. No one controls lil’ ol’ me except me.”

He stood back to look at his work and Prowl crawled carefully to the edge of his perch to get a look at...well, it looked like a small pile of things, really. Witches were strange but Jazz was correct in they did as they liked.

“Power is power, Prowler~ Ain’t any good or evil to it.” Prowl looked up as a shadow moved above him, only to find the shining visor looking down at him. “I got more than ya but I don’t gotta be so.”

The cricket shifted, turning in his spot to get a better look at the witch looming over him—the mesh covering the lid of the jar had been moved aside. He wasn’t sure if he liked that statement, it sounded too much like a temptation.

“Let’s get ya some, yeah?” Jazz hadn’t waited for a response, moving away to a basket on the far side of the room to fetch the long, limp frame of the razor snake that had nearly been the end of Prowl.


	20. Drink This Not-Worm

“Everythin’ contains power.” Jazz was on his knees, crawling with care as he drew out a small circle around the jar placed that was placed the middle. The cricket inside could do nothing but watch, following along against the glass to see, as the circle was completed and large glyphs of some some ancient and nonstandard sort were drawn inside the circle’s rim—all in a gray-white chalk.

“Everythin’ alive, that is.” The witch continued, putting their pot of pigment down amid the collection of materials and settled on the floor to sit with his legs crossed—a feat of flexibility that impressed Prowl, as he was sure he couldn’t sit in such a way when he was...himself and not a tiny insecticon.

The dead razor snack, having been set aside with the other materials, was scooped up in Jazz’s dark fingers and one of the claws lengthened the slid made the day before to free Prowl from the thing’s belly. “Now this lil’ guy’s been dead for too long so it won’t give ya whole lot--”

“Lot of what, exactly? What sort of nonsense are you trying to involve me in now?” Ah, that was enough for the hunter, it seemed. Jazz had said something about power and now there was some definite ritual shenanigans about to transpire.

The witch paused, looking up from his task with an almost befuddled expression, his dangling wire and ornaments catching the flash of his visor as it brightened. It was cute, and Prowl liked throwing Jazz off enough to get those bewitching smiles and sinister grins off his face.

“Prowler, ya gotta pay attention. Power—I’m gettin’ ya some power. Just a small bit though, ain’t enough left in a dead snake to do much.” And he returned to butterflying the dead mechanimal as if it were nothing to sit on the floor of a dim room, ripping open razor snakes with your clawed fingers.

Witches.

But Prowl wasn’t sure he wanted whatever power this was, wasn’t sure he wanted to be involved in any heathen ritual that too-powerful witches thought were grand ideas.

“Though...” And here, now that the razor snake had been sliced open from chin to tail down the underside, Jazz began peeling out small, delicate mechanisms and depositing them into a shallow aluminum bowl while whatever energon was left in the small thing dripped down into another bowl—there were a lot of bows, Prowl had come to find out, and this one was brass—for collection. “It’ll be even more weak with me doin’ the hard part.”

There was a cheery smile suddenly beaming at the cricket, trapped in his jarrarium.

“Yer lucky I like ya, my cute lil’ hunter.”

“I hate you.”

“Aw, Prowler~”

If a cricket’s glare—and Prowl was glaring with all the force his tiny form could muster—could melt metal he was sure that little monster’s head would have vaporized instantly.

All Jazz did was snicker at him and returned to his snake dissection. It didn’t take very long, with the resulting bowl of energon, bowl of internal bits and bobs, and the shell of the snake being pried apart to separate the segmented, interlocking plates—which also found a home in their own bowl. The internals and the body segments, once the witch was done separating them, were set aside while the energon was pulled into his lap so he could stir it with one of the curved struts of the snake. Uhg--

“Now, some things got more power than others.” Jazz spoke easily, stirring the small puddle of energon in the bottom of the bowl not quite enough to froth it. “This lil’ guy? Not too much, but more than ya got right now. Wanna be stronger? Ya gotta absorb it, soak it up.”

Prowl peered through the glass of his jar, looking at the bowl and feeling queasy—as much as a cricket could, which wasn’t as much as he might imagine. Still, the prospect of whatever it was Jazz had in mind was disconcerting.

Jazz spoke again but Prowl couldn’t understand it, not entirely. There were words and there was a cadence to them that tingled over his small frame as magic shifted and focused to the rhythmic sound. As he incanted, Jazz stirred, swirling the energon in the little brass bowl.

Not that Prowl could really see, his jar was on the floor and even perched on top of the tallest crystal within his vantage point was still to low.

The tingling of invisible magic against his plating snapped as it coalesced, doing whatever it was the witch bid it to, and the hunter grew more wary as whatever spell had been spoken came to an end with Jazz’s music voice.

“There.” The bowl in the witch’s lap emitted a pale glow that was _wrong_ somehow—it wasn’t the right glow for proper energon. The stirring implement was set into the aluminum bowl with th e other internal parts. “Now, will ya trust me that this won’t hurt ya?”

Already Jazz had removed the mesh covering the lid of the jar and gently nudged the cricket off the crystal, pulling each chunk out to leave Prowl sitting in the silica sand with only the colored glass as decoration.

Prowl felt terribly exposed, trapped in here with nothing to hide behind.

“Not really, but you enjoy tormenting me too much to kill me so I trust it isn’t poison.” That he could admit, even if it was a bit of an irate grumble.

Jazz made a small, amused sound. “Gettin’ all defensive when ya scared~” He set the bowl down—it just barely fit through the wide mouth of the jar—down in the sand, leaving Prowl with a narrow border of sand to occupy around the dish.

“Drink, Prowl. Drink and take, become stronger.”

The cricket pulled himself up with two of his too-long legs, peeking over the edge of the bowl into the still swirling energon at the bottom.


	21. Lightweight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More crickety adventures!
> 
> So [dragonofdispair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair) has graciously offered to beta for me! Which is super cool and awesome of them. 😭 Thank you!
> 
> I've also decided to leave everything prior to this as it is so there can be a record of my possible improvement.

Perched ungracefully on the edge of the bowl, Prowl peered down into the dead energon he’d been told to drink. The tingle of magic was so faint it was nearly undetectable but the continued swirling and the ethereal gleam hinted at something hidden from his senses. Was it a trick?

Probably.

“What, exactly, will this do to me? You talk of absorbing power but that sounds ridiculous.” So far nothing he’d been ‘given’ had truly hurt him, not physically. Prowl suspected the witch enjoyed having him alive to torment. Even so, he wasn’t going to be quick to drink the energon of a slain mechanimal for something so ambiguous as ‘power’ on Jazz’s word alone. He trusted it only as far as believing it wouldn’t kill him.

From where he sat on the floor, Jazz leaned forward and placed one hand on either side of the jar so he could look directly down into the cricket’s glass prison and at the bowl with its macabre contents. The many strands of wire around his stubby horns, Prowl had yet to see the witch without, hung down around the jar like cable vines from the towering heights of jungle pillars.

“Ya think I don’t know what I’m doin’?” There was an edge to the otherwise teasing reply. A smile lurked on Jazz’s lips, but the expression lacked the usual mischievous glee the hunter had come to associate with the usual surprises foisted upon him.

“It is that you know exactly what you’re doing,” the hunter amended, very much not wishing to actually offend the witch when he had all the power to crush Prowl. Literally crush him if the witch didn’t want to expend the effort on anything else. There was a difference between questioning a witch’s beliefs and questioning the skill of his craft. He could call Jazz names all day, but to say Jazz was unskilled with magic? That was asking for something worse to happen to him. Like becoming a worm. A horribly grotesque and malformed worm. Uhg.

“Will you please just tell me? I told you I was willing to listen to what you had to say. I would appreciate it if you gave me something other than your usual cryptic witch-talk.” He just barely managed to keep the irritation from his shrill voice. Yes, he was willing to listen but not believe. Prowl thought that was fair. He could listen and decide for himself.

That seemed to please the witch. His little smile widened into one of those bright and cheery grins that were far too charming for someone running around practicing black magic and trying to feed people razor snake blood.

“Fair enough,” he said, not moving from where he loomed over the jar. “Remember what I said about power? No good or evil to it. Everythin’ that lives contains some power, some magic. Energon, the blood of Cybertron, is obvious. It powers us all, but there’s more power floatin’ out there that pretty much everyone ignores. The glass cricket’s got power. The razor snack does too. Mecha got even more than that. There are more things with power, unseen things, that ya gotta learn to see before ya can tap them. That ain’t important _right now._”

Prowl knew this, as any hunter worth their wire should. Though this talk of unseen things unfamiliar to him, the power Jazz spoke of was not.

“What is important right now?” He’d rather think of that, not the unseen things. He was aware that witches engaged with demons, spirits, and heathen gods through summoning and tribute. Prowl remembered the _things_ he’d seen while under the influence of the witch’s potion with a pang of existential dread. He’d concluded those were just hallucinations. The idea that the strange entities he’d seen might be those demons or spirits was making him uneasy. They had been everywhere.

“Flow.” Jazz replied. “Power flows naturally, all around us, from Cybertron into the energon everythin’ needs to survive and then back into the endless flow once ya cease to be. Power is everywhere, overflowin’, and there’s plenty to siphon away for yaself if ya know how to. Take in the power of somethin’ else and yer own power grows. Take in the power of somethin’ strong and yer own becomes even stronger still. The more power ya soak up the easier ya can bend the flow of power around ya. The trick is workin’ out how to move power from one vessel to another.” 

He gestured to the bowl and Prowl shifted unsteadily on the edge to look at the energon within. It was still swirling.

“I told ya it’d only be a small amount of power. The snake was already dead and I’m the one settin’ the power free for ya to soak up and make yer own. Next time ya do it yerself.”

Actively performing some forbidden magic to siphon power from a living thing into himself was… not a prospect Prowl wanted to consider. “Disagreeable” didn’t begin to cover his feelings towards practicing witch magic himself. It was sinful. Neither taking power that was not his own nor sullying himself with unholy magic would be taken well by what was left of his family or the Temple. However, by this point his meager options had been exhausted and playing along seemed the only real way out of his small, cricket-shaped existence.

Surely he’d be forgiven for the sake of survival. Right?

While he doubted he’d be anytime soon, he’d rather not remain here. Going home would be much more pleasant. Perhaps he could return with help to blot out this smug little heathen for his perverse magic and unholy life! Wouldn’t that be immensely satisfying?  
  
Prowl wasn’t petty. Not at all.

Looking up into the band of glowing blue, Prowl was unable to tell if the witch was telling him the truth. Jazz had yet to tell him an outright falsehood but the chance of lying by omission was quite high.

He looked down into the bowl again.

Energon continued to swirl on its own volition, creating a shallow vortex perpetually turning in the confines of the little brass bowl. Ghosts of almost-there light glinted on the crest of spiraling ripples, just on the edge of his perception. For all the blasphemous talk of hidden power, the dim glow seemed serenely benign.

With an unkind mutter, Prowl took care not to slip as he crawled down the inner slope of the bowl to reach the shallow, flowing pool.

As if he hadn’t been thinking of it enough, the first tentative mouthfuls reminded him of the unpleasant potion he’d been made to drink. At the time, Prowl had suspected there had been energon from an animal mixed into it but hadn’t been sure since it hadn’t tasted off. He hoped it wouldn’t affect him the same way. He didn’t want to see those things again. 

This, however, had the sour undertone of death. As an acolyte, Prowl had been forced to taste various fake “potions” that had been made with dead energon so he could identify a true witch posing as a mere herb-healer. This definitely tasted similar, though Jazz wasn’t doing anything to hide its nature or moderate the flavor at all. It was extremely unpleasant, more unpleasant than those long-ago training potions had been. The energon caused a strange rippling sensation to slowly spread outwards from Prowl’s core.

A cricket could only consume so much. Despite drinking so little, it was enough needed for whatever ‘soaking’ magic entailed. He could feel it: a heavy, golden warmth. The moment the undefinable thing — _the warmth_ — had transferred from the swirling energon to him, the vortex of dead fluid became unpalatable. The magic that had kept the liquid flowing gone and inside him. The tingle of magic, until now faint and barely there, rattled against the inside of his tiny frame and filled him with unnatural energy.

If a cricket could look aghast, Prowl managed it.

He scrambled backward and out of the bowl, very gracefully flipped over the edge, and landed on his side in the sand. The uneasy energy left his spindly legs and odd, insecticon wings trembling. He certainly felt filled with power, it was too much. The heavy warmth filled him to bursting, pushing against the inside of his plating while a leg or three flailed inelegantly. Prowl was sure magic must be bleeding from his seams, oozing free where his tiny frame was no longer strong enough to contain it.

A euphoric sense of invincibility washed over him, taking away any worry he might have conjured. He was fine. Everything was fine.

Prowl decided he would just lay there until his everything stopped vibrating.


	22. Having A Good Time! (Having A Good Time!)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How'd y'all like that two month delay? 
> 
> Beta'd by the lovely [professor dispair.](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair)

Prowl could see everything so clearly. Not that he couldn’t see perfectly well before, but now his bulbous, crickety optics saw a harder edge. The world was sharp. He considered looking up and out into the dim room, or up at the witch who loomed in silence over his jar, having not moved from where he’d settled before Prowl had his first taste of power, but it was a fleeting thought. The sand was interesting enough to hold his attention. He was sure he could see every granule of crystal, every subtle variation in hue as the diluted light filtering in through the open passageway caught on the grains.

Sparkly-shiny!

Round and round, Prowl scurried against the wall of the jar, just staring down at the sand as it rushed by in front of him. He hop-skittered as he went, unable to keep the bounce out of his long legs. He desired to go, to run — hopping was also an option — and do something; it was all he could focus on, his thoughts unable to coalesce while he so badly itched to move. How many laps had he completed? 

While the restless energy he’d absorbed had settled enough to allow him to run along with gusto rather than twitch uselessly in the sand, the euphoric warmth that had overfilled him still roiled in him. He felt fantastic! Solid but light, strong but spry. There was a ripple of liquid strength that flowed through his circuitry, warm and thick, as the metal of his frame slowly absorbed it.

He felt like a sponge dropped in oil. A serene, carefree sponge.

Sponge or glass cricket, who cared? Not Prowl — he was too preoccupied with the utter lack of concern he felt towards anything at that moment. His worries were gone. The warm, heavy feeling of being grounded and secure left him pleasantly empty-headed. He was a twitchy, useless lump in the sand no longer! He was strong, fortified, and feared for no— what was that sound?

Oh, the witch was laughing at him.

It wasn’t an unkind laugh. Even with his mind half-drowned in his current high, he thought the sound was more amused than mocking. “Feelin’ invincible?” And then Jazz’s voice took on a more sheepish tone, one Prowl remembered from their first encounter. “Prolly a bit much for someone yer size, huh? Lil’ crickets usually don’t go sippin’ up power that ain’t their own.”

Prowl finally paused to look up at Jazz properly. The witch still peered down into the jar but now something was different. Perhaps it was the new sharpness of the world, the odd clarity of everything he saw, but Prowl was sure Jazz looked different somehow and he quickly became distracted with the familiar-not-familiar smile and shining visor above him.

For all the sudden attention, not that the attention of a cricket was all that intimidating, the witch seemed only amused and watched the cricket in return. “What is it?”

Prowl could only fidget, he wished to move still but the mystery of what he saw yet could not pinpoint kept him in place. His long legs shifted against the sand regardless.

Eventually, he managed, “You look different.”

The smile Jazz wore, until now relaxed and amused, stretched wide and the shining blue visor flashed more brightly. Prowl thought that reflected the witch’s satisfaction. “I bet I do. Still lil’ ol’ me though.”

Jazz leaned to the left and reached through the open lid of the jar. The bowl in the sand — he had completely forgotten it was there — suddenly lifted. Prowl looked to the side to see the witch’s dark hand retreat with the bowl out of the jar. There were no obstructions now, he could run across rather than just arou—

“Prowl, hunter.” Jazz, his tone calm and confident — knowing — paused to make sure the cricket was paying attention. “Are ya still yerself? I know what kinda stories yer priests tell. Are ya crazy?”

There was a brief flash of annoyance at the insinuation but it faded quickly; the pleasant high smothered his offense before it could even take hold. Prowl wondered where Jazz had heard the stories of priests, but he couldn’t focus on that line of thought right now. Jazz was still above him, waiting for an answer.

“No!” No, not crazy, but he was restless and fidgeted even more. Jazz still looked different, more clear than even the sharpened world around him. Prowl thought he should be unnerved, frightened — he wasn’t.

Dark fingers came in from above, hovering over the fidgety cricket for a moment before the clawed tips nudged him to move. Prowl obliged, scrambled forward, and let the itchy desire to _move_ take him as he ran across the sand.

Dignity? Never heard of it.

Jazz watched from where he was sprawled on his front on the floor, entertained with the manic cricket in the jar. He asked if Prowl was mad with fury or lost in the grip of terror — Prowl automatically answered _no_ to both — or if Prowl wanted to commit murder, harm himself, or to tear apart some mechanimal or wreak destruction — no, no, and no, Prowl answered before he could think further on the witch’s words. There was no urgency in the Jazz’s tone, no alarm or curiosity. Prowl might have suspected he was being condescended to. He didn’t, because he couldn’t do anything other than run and focus on the questions themselves. The questions were so specific, the wording too familiar. It took the hunter far too long to realize Jazz meant the questions entirely rhetorically. They were the claims the Temple made about those lost to witch magic.

Prowl wasn’t lost to witch magic! If he could have held onto the blink of outrage, he might have complained, but it had bloomed and wilted to nothing so quickly that all he did was answer the next question with a simple no.

Witches were wild and mad, dangerous and unpredictable like feral beasts! So said the Temple… to the masses. Prowl’s family, the other hunter families, were taught the truth: witches weren’t raving fools lost in trance. How could a tainted spark be that much of a threat if it was so utterly consumed by madness? They weren’t. They were thinking mechanisms, and often clever ones at that. That was why the Temple _needed_ the hunter families. Better to train hunters with that truth from birth than risk losing a Hunter to incautiousness because they thought their quarry to be only a demon, and less capable than an animal.

But the words Jazz used were so much like those of Temple priests, nearly verbatim. How many hunters had this witch encountered to know these claims so well? Or had Jazz, with all his painted glyphs and dangling charms, gone into the little town to the North to have a friendly chat with the priest tending the small temple there? No, the villagers had been too skittish when he’d questioned them. They knew Jazz was out here and kept well within their walls.

Prowl waited — skittered and waited — for the other questions, for Jazz to ask if Prowl was a witch according to the teachings of the hunter families. The questions he’d have to answer “yes” to. They didn’t come. That was… that was… importan— _oooh he could hop!_ Once finished, Jazz asked no more questions and Prowl was free to scamper around inside his jar and burn off the excess energy. The sand was pretty. He had no sense of time but surely it must have passed beyond the glass walls of his prison. If only Prowl could focus on his inner thoughts for more than a moment. His fleeting questions were pushed aside in favor of a constant stream of new input. The sparkle of the sand was so _vivid_ as he ran from one side of the jar to the next and back again. 

Eventually, the desire to run-hop-skitter weakened and, while the sand was still pretty, other thoughts slowly crept in where there had been no room for them before. The glitter of the sand had faded back to normal when he finally stopped moving. Spindly legs sprawled in all directions. The little cricket nestled against the glass wall of the jar to puzzle over the vague sense of unease, which had taken root beneath the ebbing of euphoria. Mild at first, it grew as he rested in the sand, his thoughts slowly gaining traction.

Witch magic.

Yes, he had partaken of witch magic with nary a fuss! That wasn’t true; he had felt trepidation about the whole thing but had done so for the sake of survival. Was it guilt or horror that lurked under the gooiness of not-caring he still tried to cling to? At least he had enough mind now to keep these thoughts.

Was this worse or better than being a worm?

Movement drew the hunter’s attention and he looked up — there was a world outside his jar, suddenly he remembered that too — to find the wide already dim room plunged in darkness. No light crept in through the long entrance passageway. It was impossible to see much of anything that wasn’t directly in front of him, but he could easily see the floating slash of blue that was the witch’s visor. 

He watched the floating visor move in the dark for a while, the witch doing Primus knew what nonsense now. Jazz was close to the ground often, and Prowl imagined he might be drawing glyphs on the floor for some unknown purpose, perhaps setting another trap for foolish hunters. Prowl wondered how Jazz could see anything in such complete darkness.

Prowl didn’t keen; he was not yet himself enough to despair. He knew he might. He felt unhappy enough now: a quiet sadness that he imagined would grow worse when the last of his happy warmth faded away. He shifted in the sand, drawing all his spindly long legs up and rubbed his weird, malformed body against itself.

_Chirpchirp._

It was… soothing, and Prowl was still not altogether recovered enough to feel shame at embracing his cricket form to self-soothe, instead of merely irritating the witch who’d done this to him.

It helped, the chirp-song.

The blue of Jazz’s visor seemed to change shape as he no doubt turned to look — really, how did he see in the dark? — at the sound. The blue light seemed to watch for a moment before turning back to his task, whatever it might be.

Prowl continued to sing.

In the dark, it was even more difficult to gauge the passage of time but Prowl didn’t think it had been very long before Jazz leaned over to peer into the open top of the jar. For another moment he did nothing and then he placed woven metal over the lid and secured it. He didn’t replace the hunks of crystal.

“Ya had an excitin’ day, lil’ hunter.” Jazz sounded subdued. He lifted the jar, careful not to disturb the still chirping cricket. They moved in the dark, headed for the witch’s nest of a berthroom. “It’s time t’rest now. We can talk tomorrow.”

Prowl said nothing. He just continued his cricket song. Yes, rest would be good. Tomorrow he could berate himself for whatever weird magic he’d partaken in. He had _liked_ feeling secure and untouchable and wished the happy mania had lasted a bit longer.

It wasn’t as dark in this room. As Jazz settled the jar on the shelf overlooking the berth, Prowl watched the witch and all his shiny, dangly baubles catch the dim light. When Jazz laid down in the messy berth for recharge, he didn’t complain about the noise so Prowl continued to sing until he was ready to rest as well.


End file.
